Friday, June 25, 2010

“So how did you get to know Kris Kristofferson?”The intelligent young woman asked me that question when she was cruising through some pictures of the great songwriter (I really can’t call him a great singer-songwriter…. Because, well … listen to him sing….) But I love the guy. His wife and kids too.The young woman was putting together a story on Bonnaroo for a student news web site where I serve as sort of “journalist-in-residence.” I like this work and the young people and their ideas and energy. While we looked at the Bonnaroo story, she had begun to go through the internet files to see what types of pictures were available. Oh there was the big Centeroo with the arch. There were some pseudo-hippies and perhaps some real ones too.Most of the real ones are dead, you know. Or they’ve gone away to work for Big Oil, Corporate Media and the Insurance Empire. Perhaps they even work for FEMA or are next in line to serve as supreme commander for the illegal war, once Gen. Dave gives his “Rolling Stone” interview.Oops. There I go again. A fellow I like (despite his politics) wrote a note on Facebook the other day accusing liberals of being non-patriotic, that we’re tearing down all that this nation stands for. Glad the conservatives have come down so hard on their pals in Big Oil, Shotgun Dick and the like. Conservatives, with the Big O’s help (it pains me to say), have done a great job to my favorite place in my limited exposure to Earth. Oh, I guess I like Bermuda better. And the Mayan ruins in Central Mexico were cool too. Yeah, and I got my kids in Romania. Spent a lot of time there. Great country. Also Switzerland. And the Netherlands. And Canada…. But you know, I’m pretty simple in a complicated way. I love the Redneck Riviera, where I’ve been told by Anderson Cooper that Big Oil coats the sand, and shrimp-boat captains are killing themselves. Talk about ruining America and tearing us apart?Ah, get off the soapbox, old man.Yeah, that’s where I was going. Will get there eventually. Castles made of sand melt in the sea eventually. Perhaps not so much now that they are caked with oil.OK, back to the time spent with the very nice and intelligent young woman. She was going through the pictures from Bonnaroo, to illustrate a good story another student had written. That’s when she stopped on the picture of Kris…. And she laughed. “Look at Kris Kristofferson,” she said. I said “He’s a friend of mine.”She surveyed my appearance and it was obvious she could see why I might be a friend of this long-in-the-tooth, weathered man of words. I’m kind of that way, although not as long of tooth yet. I hope to make it that far. No one is paying me so much for my words these days, which is why I’m casting them out here for free in hopes for a sitcom based on my days with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and their liberation of Alberta from the crazed gypsy mongrels. Or whatever those kinds of dogs were. Then this young woman said, “How in the world did that happen?” or something like that. Here I am sitting in this little newsroom talking to a bright and talented young student … and I know Kris Kristofferson ….personally?Gotta admit that at the very first, I thought that this was gonna be one of those moments where I could talk about hanging out with Kristofferson. About how Tom T. Hall once told the crowd at the Hall of Fame how I was a great writer. Perhaps I could throw in my friendship with Mac Wiseman and how Louise Scruggs once took the phone away from Earl so she could assure me she was going to get Bob Dylan to call me. "If anyone can get you Dylan,I can," said Louise, a great and stubborn woman. I occasionally have been known to call Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. And I knew Ginsberg and Groucho a little.I thought I could tell this young student how I once had a good conversation with Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones and how that band’s music director, Chuck Leavell, invited me backstage for a visit the last time those boys were in town. He remains a friend of sorts.I was gonna tell her about how I interviewed Brian Wilson and how I spent an afternoon walking a golf course with Alice Cooper.I was going to tell her how John Kay from Steppenwolf remains a friend and we correspond after I was the only one he ever allowed to interview him in depth during his 16 years of residency in the Nashville area. He lives outside Vancouver now.Then perhaps I could have stepped out of music and told her how I know Muhammad Ali, have spent a few hours casually hanging out with him and also interviewed him several other times. Knew O.J. pretty well, too, though I seldom brag about that. “To my pal, Tim, Peace and Love, O.J.” says the autograph on the picture he gave me when he took me to lunch at Austin's, a restaurant in downtown Clarksville. I don’t think the Juice lived up to his peace and love mantra. You know he’s not really a nice guy, even if he did win the Heisman and buy a nice Bronco. Wilma Rudolph was the cousin of an old friend of mine, Ol’ Steve Pettus, who ran a barbecue stand outside Clarksville. I used to spend nights barbecuing shoulders with Steve and his brother, Euless. I regularly was invited to the massive Pettus family reunions. I was treated as family. Wilma was a beautiful and graceful woman.Oh yeah, I could have then gone on to talk about my two interviews with Ringo Starr and how Tom Petty once wrote me a personal note telling me how much he liked my Facebook mugshot. “Mr. Ghianni, nice picture,” he said, likely coughing and reaching for a bag of chips, salty and chocolate and a quart of Cherry Garcia ice cream.Oh yeah, Eddy Arnold was my friend. So is George Jones. I knew Carl Perkins. Scotty Moore is one of my favorite people. Duane Eddy kind of likes me. Then there’s Foster & Lloyd, good fellows both. Johnny Cash liked me. Perhaps I’d tell this student how I was supposed to interview him ---he had agreed to have me come out to his house after "I get back from the Coast." Instead he went in the hospital and died, so I covered the funeral instead with my much younger old man pal, Peter Cooper, a fine musician of limited acclaim.Ahh, but this young student wanted to know about Kristofferson. So, I took to describing the great series of events, from a telephone interview to a meeting at the Americana Music Awards to conversations at June and Johnny’s funerals to, well, a special afternoon when Kris and his son Johnny Cash Kristofferson wandered with me down Music City Row. Johnny shot video. I’ve got that in my closet. The three of us roamed the wild streets of Nashville on foot and also in a minivan. You ever try to carry on a conversation with a personal-hero-turned-friend when you are driving a minivan around a statue of nude people? Don’t look, Ethel… It was Kris’ first daytime visit to the Row in 30 years and his first sober visit in probably much longer.Anyway, as I told the young woman the Kristofferson story -- warming up for a longer trip down memory lane, perhaps even stopping to recall the time my pal, Rob Dollar, and I, along with some News Brothers comrades, joked around with John Glenn and terrified the Secret Service -- I noticed she began flipping quickly ahead to other images. Dave Matthews, Conan, Jack Black, Regina Spektor, Dr. Dog … I’m a fan of many of them. I particularly like Spektor. Matthews bores me. But Conan did a fair “Tonight Show” impersonation there for awhile. Funny guy. I still prefer Letterman. In fact, the king of late night remains Johnny Carson, whose last TV appearance was to resounding applause at the Letterman show.I saw Carson’s show one sweaty afternoon in Burbank back in 1973. Slept on the sidewalk to get tickets. David Carradine was there, riding high on his Kung Fu fame and long before he was found dead in a hotel closet in some remote land. And Buddy Hackett was there. Outside, when the show was over, I found Tommy Newsome parked near me by the Orange Julius stand. You may not remember Tommy. He was the trombonist in the Tonight Show Band who sometimes took over as bandleader for Doc. Oh yeah, I know Doc, too. Nice, unassuming man. Ah, but I digress again. Back to the young woman in the newsroom with her pick of pretty pictures of young artists. I realized then that she probably wouldn’t be that interested in hearing me tell those stories. Probably had better things to do. You know, classes and stuff like that. Gotta get that Gypsyphonic Disko image and post it. Actually, I think she went with a crowd shot. Just as well.Good, smart young woman. Likely to be a successful journalist or successful at whatever she tries in life. And, I have to admit, there was a difference between the images she was dwelling on and the image of Kris. I mean, Kris looked … old….Then it hit me. I’m old too. In fact, this first hit me for sure when someone, my wife or someone else of equally innocent and diabolic intent, started telling me and everyone else who would listen that I was almost 60, rather than 58 or "in his 50s."“Your dad is almost 60 years old, Joe. I think he can tie his own shoes.” OK. Usually I can, by the way.I suppose Kristofferson gets that sort of stuff around his house, too. Oh well, I'll only live 'til I die.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Me 'n' old Skipper sat on a bench. It was hot.... Boy was it hot.A long time ago I wrote the lead -- or something very similar –- on a newspaper column that helped launch a journalism revolution. It was a prime moment in the birth of the News Brothers.Yeah, I know. Unfortunately the revolution – with its purpose to put out good newspapers, have fun and take pride in serving a community (because the pay was virtually nothing) – was pretty much squashed by the corporate mindset. What’s that mindset? Well, I guess to define what the corporate mindset is, you just drive to the Gulf of Mexico and look at the tar balls, the oil-reddened water, take a deep whiff of the burning oil and look at the dead pelicans and dolphins.It is a world that is dominated by the likes of Shotgun Dick, that fat radio blowhard, big insurance, fruitless wars for oil and foreign countries who own the monetary system of the land of the free and the home of the brave. What’s happened to our country? Let’s get our pride back. Maybe find a more perfect union where generals don’t take their shots at the commander-in-chief in “Rolling Stone.” Heck, that magazine used to feature John Lennon and the Grateful Dead. Now it’s Miley, Joe Jonas, "Lost" and some four-star general puffing up his ego by back-stabbing the President of the United States of America. Talk about your corporate mentality. It’s in the Army now. As a reporter, of course I would have written that story if the general had the immense ego and lack of manners to tell it. What has happened to common courtesy? Is the Army going to be in charge? Well, if so, just remember the scene in "Dr. Strangelove" when Slim Pickens goes for his nuclear bomb rodeo ride.Oh, the Big O is far from perfect, but he deserves to have his generals complain in the privacy of the Oval Office over glasses of Ovaltine and plates of oil-drenched Gulf shrimp.Another story, another night. The News Brothers were the kinds who would have confronted their boss face-to-face. In fact, I had to on more than one occasion visit the publisher. And I survived, even earned extra respect. Back then it was OK to stand up to bosses to their faces. And they responded in kind: Face to face. Backs were for patting or for scratching. Elvis: What happened to our country?Now the News Brothers story will be told one day soon. Not in this forum. Parts of the story are to be found on You Tube, where my co-conspirator Rob “Death” Dollar has several videos posted. Some of these are at the bottom of this page or at the THE NEWS BROTHERS page on Facebook.The Skipper mentioned at the top of this little foray was an old salt, a stretcher of the truth, a man with a heart of gold, both a mentor to and a believer in the News Brothers. He was short of education and grace, gnarled with arthritis and simply brilliant. He told us stories of Al Capone, of Pearl Harbor, of carny sideshows and being on a ship that was shot out from beneath him in the North Atlantic. True? Didn’t matter. I loved Skipper … whose real name was Okey Stepp. Old friends called him “Red,” for the hair he once had. We just treated him as one of us.I thought of this today because my friend, Rob, sent me a note commenting on this 100-degreee weather. "It was HOT today. Boy was it HOT. And I wasn't even sitting on a bench," he wrote, an acknowledgement of that one special, very hot day when I went out to do a column about the effects of the horrid weather on Clarksville and made it only as far as the bench in front of the Royal York Hotel.Back then, and we’re talking three decades back, the old hotel – once a luxury joint where movie stars stayed – was something Roger Miller might have been thinking about when he wrote that “rooms to rent 50 cents” line in “King of the Road.”“Fireproof” read the neon sign on the hotel window. The rooms inside, even the perches that held the thin mattresses, were made of concrete and tile. It’s been refurbished to something resembling luxury in the decades since.Back then, though it was a home for drifters, down-and-outers, lovable losers, no-account boozers, Skipper and the News Brothers.Early in our association, Rob and I -- along with other News Brothers and several guys who since have died, others who have backed down and bent over to properly salute corporate journalism and some who just enjoyed a laugh and a smoke with their coffee -– would retreat to the coffee shop at the Royal York Hotel between editions of The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper in Clarksville.We’d get to work at about 5 a.m., get the first edition done by about 9 or 9:30, go grab an endless cup of coffee from Raissa Gray, the proprietress of the joint and a true News Brothers enthusiast, and then go back to get the second edition and, for awhile, the third or “FINAL” out.That was back when the newspaper was still aiming for 21,000 circulation. We made it up to 24,000 at the height of the News Brothers reign. Since we all left Clarksville –- I turned the lights out when I was the last News Brother to move on back in 1988 –- I have no idea how circulation has gone. Down, I would guess, like that of the rest of the industry.I’m not sure. I like the folks up there and wish them well. After all, I spent almost 15 years bleeding for that newspaper in its pre-corporate incarnation. I’ll tell you, I’d rather read a News Brothers newspaper -- with its focus on terrified escaped monkeys, monster catfish, war-ravaged soldiers, civic corruption and hillbilly homicides than the USA Today Jr. that serves as Chamber of Commerce “local journalism” in cities around the nation. Not necessarily addressing Clarksville here, but the whole darned industry. This isn’t the fault of the workers who do their best to hang onto jobs and work with honor, knowing that the bottom line guillotine soon could rise over their heads. Whack! One more unemployed head rolling out the door doesn't do much to solve the problem.Oh yeah, we didn’t just have wild news stories back then. We had stories that touched the heart, including my own very real detailing of my friendship with the mother of a football player who was murdered and Rob’s story of a fellow dressed up like Santa Claus who was on his way to a Christmas Eve party when he noticed a house on fire.Without a single “ho” –- hey stop it, I’m talking about the famous “ho-ho-ho” that Santa’s known for, not the angels of the night -- he ran into the house and rescued the occupant. And then, faster than you can say “Rudolph’s got a brand new bag,” Santa was off to the party.Tell me you wouldn’t buy those newspapers?Oh yeah, and to toot my own horn, I also wrote a column three days a week that told more stories of real people. The premise was that we all are more alike than different, that we share the same hopes, dreams and ambitions and fears, even if we weren't in the proper advertising demographic.I would wander the streets and just start conversations. If it was Christmastime, perhaps I’d frame the story in holiday detail. Floods on the Cumberland? Go find a person who has lived there forever and who can tell of high waters past. World Series time? Find one of the former Negro Leagues stars who lived in the city. Enjoy lemonade and conversation. And share their stories with our readers.Which brings me back to the very hot day when I wandered out the side of the Leaf-Chronicle building onto Third and walked the block down to the Royal York. I needed a column about the heat and I think I’d already visited the local ice company. I saw Skipper in the lobby of the hotel. I can't remember all the details now. He probably was watching “Bonanza” reruns, I bought him a cup of coffee to go, and we went outside and sat on the bench. And we talked about the weather, the war, women, newspapers … I can’t remember now. I can’t find the column now that I’m still surrounded by piles of books and music and paraphernalia of my journalism career while contractors try to reclaim my downstairs space from the flood damage, little thanks to insurance companies or FEMA. I told Rob tonight that if he has a copy of that column, I’d love to see it soon.You see, today, since my car has been displaced from the garage by our furniture while the rec room, my office and the laundry room are being healed, I decided that it had been taking too much sun. It needed to be polished. It’s an old car and did not have one of those new-fangled laminated finishes. You actually have to wax it a few times a year.So I took it to one of those self-wash joints, over in Melrose, and washed and rinsed it and then applied a light wax. It took about 45 minutes, and even though the work was in the shade, I sweated through my Butler Final Four T-shirt (a gift from “Flash” News Brother, a professor at that storied Cinderella university. He has short hair, but he’s a great guy with a swell wife I've known since she was in sixth-grade or so).On the way back to my house, I swigged greedily from a Pepsi Maxx 20-ouncer and hoped that soon the air-conditioning would overcome the stifling heat in the 26-year-old car.Yep, me and my old Saab, we rolled back to Crieve Hall. Boy was it hot.When I came upstairs, there was the message from Rob, adapting the old Skipper lead to comment on the weather today up in his home state of Kentucky, where he serves as a secret agent and government head-counter, all the while maintaining his sense of wonder and humor. I often send him a note to ask “Why?” when things happen in life. Neither of us has the answer. "Why not?," I guess. So this evening I’ve been thinking about that day on the bench with Skipper. It’s nasty out today and it looks like it’s going to be with us, as Jay-Z might say: “for a spell.” I wrung the sweat from my Butler T-shirt, put on my Team Italia shirt (it is World Cup time, though I could care less about soccer) and I sat down at the keyboard. Thanks to Rob, I had a great memory of an afternoon spent drinking coffee in the burning heat on a bench in downtown Clarksville.Me 'n' old Skipper sat on a bench. It was hot.... Boy was it hot.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Started an interesting, to me, discussion the other day on Facebook when I just tossed out a favorite summer song. Wanted to see what people said in response.I wrote the following in my status: All-time favorite summer song? How about Cream's 'Toad' played full-blast, echoing off the surrounding buildings.... Just thinking. Not sure yet....I landed on “Toad” because of some time going through my memories lately, at least in part due to reconnecting with Capt. Kirk, Terry Kirkwood, an old college chum who served in the Navy. He was the guy Ho Chi Minh pointed out as a reason it was necessary to get all of the Americans out of the former South Vietnam. I mean, Capt. Kirk was no intergalactic warrior. He was just a pool-playing swabbie whose claim to fame was that he entertained the deck mates up and down the Delta by singing Tom T. Hall’s “It Sure Can Get Cold In Des Moines": The Iowa weather was 13 below/I had come to Des Moines for a radio show/I awoke in the evening from a traveler's sleep/With notions of something to eat/The old elevator slid down past the floors/My head and my eyes said "You should have slept more."/The man at the desk said the restaurant was closed/Outside it was 14 below….Of course, if I am indeed telling the truth above, Capt. Kirk, a proud native of Des Moines, where he now works as something of a telephone sharecropper and reformed carnival sideshow airbrush T-shirt artist (his life’s ambition, it turns out), was singing that wintry song of his hometown because it was always hot in Vietnam.So that’s not a summer song, of course. But my e-conversations with the Captain, who was a faithful sidekick and pal during the time Ames, Iowa was my turf -- I know, who would want Ames other than me? But I loved it there. It was where I met Groucho Marx, that Ginsberg poet guy, my Uncle Moose, and, yep, the boys from Sha-Na-Na. And the late Dennis Wilson before he was the late Dennis Wilson -- have inspired me to remember those days and nights among the tornados, cornfields and pig barns. And that’s where this summer song conversation began. Because during that time in my life, I lived in high-rise dormitories on the campus of Iowa State University.As on any campus, the greatest times are in the spring, when the taste of summer arrives and music pounds from every available window, floor speaker and ‘65 Falcon. After an Iowa winter (see Tom T.’s song above – I love that guy, by the way. His wife, Miss Dixie, too.), it’s great to feel anything resembling summer heat and perhaps feel some summer beat ricocheting off the high rises while throwing Frisbees over the rows of sunbathing coeds. And those are the greatest memories I have of “Toad,” because it is Cream at its finest, particularly Ginger Baker at his best. His work opened the doors for a lot of rock drummers to go ahead and take the forefront. Good or bad, a lot of drum solos have come from that wondrous 13-minute version of “Toad” that’s found of “Wheels of Fire.” It earlier had appeared on “Fresh Cream” and was a staple in concert.Now I’ve seen Cream. But I probably felt Cream the best on spring days in Ames, Iowa, when, without a doubt, the live version of Toad would pound from someone’s speakers and shake the air from Larch Hall to the power plant.Perhaps it’s not my all-time favorite summer song. But I do know that every spring I do dig it out and play it. Loud. Try it sometime.By the way, years ago, I had my vinyl version of “Wheels of Fire” stolen. If someone out there has a copy of it with my name on it, I’d welcome its return, no questions asked. Also lost “Bitches Brew” and a couple of Zappa albums.Here are some of the responses I got to my posting about songs that bring back summer memories:Father Laird MacGregor, Episcopal priest of the manly Pressed Rat and Warthog order: “Ridin’ in My Car” by NRBQ. But then he rethought some and came up with entire "Pet Sounds" album by the Beach Boys. “Conjures memories of one summer in particular," he writes. Perhaps it was the summer he opted to cut his long hair, shave his head, enter the priesthood and give up his favorite breakfast of licorice-flavored Schnapps and Wheaties.The good padre, rector to the famous News Brothers band of journalists co-founded by this author, then adds “Nobody has mentioned Mungo Jerry.”So, with that in mind, I figured I’d dredge up that old Mungo tune: In the summertime when the weather's high, /you can stretch right up and touch the sky,/when the weather's fine,/you got women, you got women on your mind./Have a drink, have a drive,/go out and see what you can find. Kinda makes you wonder why Mungo Jerry isn’t hailed as a great band in the vein of The Beatles or at least be mentioned in the same line as Canned Heat. Jim East, an old journalism pal opts for Eddie Cochran’s version of "Summertime Blues.” I personally would go with The Who version from “Live at Leeds.” But Jim’s a stubborn traditionalist in the most sincere way, though perhaps not a Republican. Speaking of that tune, who remembers the version by Blue Cheer? Yep. I see you nodding out there.Darryl Illmo Prince writes in that he likes an old-reliable that will have you dancing: “Gotta Go With Van The Man … ‘Brown Eyed Girl.’” Drew White, Blue Oyster Cult’s meatiest fan, weighed in with " ’Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group. In the car, windows rolled down and the volume turned up to 11. It sounded even better in the old days of AM radio coming out of a single speaker grill on a metal dashboard!” Drew still has that old sound system. It’s on concrete blocks in his front yard. Next to the fridge. Nah, not true. But nice image. Ray “Da Plane, Boss” Duckworth chose Bob Seger’s “Night Moves.” Must have come from a time before Ray only listened to Jimmy Dickens while sipping coffee and watching for airplanes from his patio. Bush Bernard seems to be speaking from his musical heritage in the bogs of Louisiana when he says “"Play that Funky Music, White Boy."Renee Elder says “For me, personally, it's got to be ‘Rikki Don't Lose that Number’ by Steely Dan.” Now I’m not a Dan man, but that’s a pretty nifty little pop tune, although it’s not in my collection for some reason. I’ll not lose sleep over it, though. Chuck Emery, formerly the honcho of failed Catfish Bay Records, a fine musician and former Chukker’s record store owner on Franklin Street before Clarksville got blown away by the tornado says “Toad or NSU or I Feel Free...or maybe a medley!”Janice Kay Brewster Staggs says “Love Cream, but think I'd pick a Led Zep song.”For David Sims it’s "’Blue Sky’ by the Allman Brothers. Greatest kick-back song ever.”My cousin Michelle Robertson weighs in with another of my own favorites by my old pal John Sebastian: “Hot town, summer in the city, back of my neck.....”Kathleen Carlson, who obviously wants to take off all her clothes (it’s part of the lyric of this ridiculous and I can’t believe she’s serious choice): "It's getting hot in here” by Nelly. Nelly or Skanky or one of those pop/hop guys were preferred by executives at the morning newspaper to Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson back when I was there. Caused me problems when I was in charge of entertainment coverage, as I really didn’t cooperate. “You can’t be a maverick and not think like me and be a success here,” or something like that I was told. Yet, I found personal success came by playing Cash and Kristofferson stories above Skanky and Nelly or whoever. Oh yeah, Shaggy was the other one. I thought this was Music City? Oh well, thanks for bringing this up, Kathy. Are you OK? Is it getting hot in there? Rob Simbeck has a couple of haunting melodies on his mind this summer when he submits "Tie: ‘Spooky’ and ‘Time of the Season.’"And then there’s Reinaldo Garcia, who not only picks the song, he picks the summer and the city: “L.A., 1967, Light My Fire (long version.)” You know that I would be a liar if I didn’t say I loved that song. Heck, I bought all the vinyl put out by Jim and the boys. I even like The Doors’ “Soft Parade” album, which is the one most don’t like. Course I’m no Lizard King.In wrapping up this little experiment, I think any song that makes you smile and think of great summers past is a good song.Actually “Toad” isn’t my favorite summer song. That would really be “A Day in the Life” from that 1967 summer album about that little vaudeville band that was formed in Paul McCartney’s head. No, it would be “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” because it dominated the AM dial during the one year when I was cleaning out stalls and trimming weeds at a day camp in Chicago.Or maybe it would be Rick Nelson’s version of “Summertime and the livin’ is easy, fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high” from my true youth.Nah, I’ll stick with “Toad.” At least as this first day of summer descends on us tomorrow morning. Later in the day, I may opt for a visit by the Mighty Quinn.Course I do like that slamming coffin lid at the end of "A Day in the Life."

WELCOME VISITORS

Total Pageviews

About Me

I am a proud Baby Boomer, with all the good and the bad baggage that comes with it. After more than 30 years as an award-winning newspaper editor and columnist,I'm now a freelance writer living in Nashville, Tennessee.